ABSTRACT
Why should academics enjoy a special kind of freedom not enjoyed by other citizens and professionals in other fields? The basic rationale for general freedom of expression and thought, deriving from John Stuart Mill, appeals to the tendency of such freedom to produce discovery of the truth, the truth being a utility-maximizing discovery. The rationale for the freedom of expression and thought of academics is not wholly dissimilar: The idea is that scholars deploying disciplinary methods will produce more discovery of the truth and that these truths will also make society better off.
Reasons for being skeptical about Mill’s argument—for example, that discovery of the truth will not be enhanced given the deficient epistemic conditions of most public discourse—ought to be muted in the academic context, assuming certain conditions are met. For the crux of academic freedom, dating from Humboldt’s idea of Wissenschaftsfreiheit, is that only the thought and expression part of a Wissenschaft belongs in a university, and it is precisely in virtue of being governed by wissenschaftlich standards that such thought and expression is conducive to the discovery of what is true. This means that academic freedom can offer no protection for pseudo-disciplines or those that eschew the acquisition of knowledge; it also offers no protection for students, who have no disciplinary expertise. By the same token, it means that within a Wissenschaft, absolute (or as Marcuse would put it, “indiscriminate”) toleration of any point of view arising from disciplinary expertise must reign supreme.
